Installing AlmaLinux from Scratch / AlmaLinux (Rocky Linux, RHEL) Manual Install

Instructor: In this lesson, you'll learn how to install AlmaLinux from scratch, or said another way, you'll learn how to install AlmaLinux manually. Knowing how to do this is useful if you want to customize your installation, or if you're working on physical hardware. Now if you already have a Linux distribution installed, and you're ready to move on with this course, feel free to skip this lesson. For example, if you have already installed Linux using a VDI, or a virtual disk image, in VirtualBox, you already have a working Linux system to use for this course, so you can choose to skip this lesson if you want to. At this point, you should have VirtualBox installed on your operating system. The next thing you're going to do is download AlmaLinux from almalinux.org. Once you're on the website, find the download link and click on it. By the way, this might look completely different when you're accessing the AlmaLinux website. Of course, websites get updated all the time, so just find the download section of the site no matter where it is or what it looks like at this time. Now choose the latest version that is next to your architecture. For most people, this is going to be x86_64. I'm on a Windows PC with an Intel processor in it, so I'm going to choose x86_64. At the time of this recording, version 9.1 is the latest version of AlmaLinux, so I'm going to click on that to download it. Don't be surprised or concerned if there is a newer version when you visit the site. Simply look for the highest number and click on that. Now you'll be presented with a list of sites called mirrors. You can choose any of the options because they all contain copies of the exact same files. I'm just going to click on the first one in the list. Now you are presented with a list of files. Click on any of the files that contain the text dvd. Once you do so, the download will begin. It's a very large file, so it'll take some time to download. Once the ISO file has been downloaded, you're ready to create a virtual machine, so go ahead and start the VirtualBox application. Create a new virtual machine by clicking on Machine and then clicking on New. You can see that VirtualBox asks you for a few bits of information: the Name, the Machine Folder, the ISO Image, the Type, and the Version. I'm going to name the virtual machine almadesktop. Use the default value in the folder field unless you need to store the virtual machine in some other location where you have more disk space, such as another drive. Next, you'll see a line that starts with ISO Image. On the right-hand side of that line, click on the arrow. If you've used other ISOs with VirtualBox before, you'll see them listed here. Since this is the first time we're using this specific ISO, we need to click on Other. Navigate to your Downloads folder and click on the ISO. Here I have a shortcut to my Downloads folder, and I'll click on that, and now I'll highlight the ISO and click on open. Near the bottom of the window, you'll see text that reads, Skip unattended installation. Click the checkbox next to that text. The reason we want to do that is twofold. The first reason is that VirtualBox may not support unattended installations for this specific version of Linux. There will always be a delay between the latest release of Linux and support for the unattended installation to appear in VirtualBox. The second reason is that this allows us to simulate what it's like to install Linux directly on physical hardware or other virtualization platforms. This way you'll know how to install Linux anywhere, not just inside VirtualBox. Now that we've selected to skip the unattended installation, click on Next. The minimum amount of memory recommended is 2 gigabytes or 2048 megabytes. I have plenty of RAM on my system, so I'm going to dedicate about half of my memory resources to this virtual machine. I'm going to type 4096 megabytes, which is 4 gigabytes, in the Base Memory box. As for the number of CPUs, I'm going to leave it at the default of 1. You might want to assign more CPUs to the virtual machine if you are going to be running resource intensive applications. If you want to explore the desktop and use the VM for learning Linux, there's no need to add more CPUs. Now we're ready to click on Next, so I'll do that now. At this time, we need to create a virtual hard disk. In the Disk Size field, I'm going to set it to 100 gigabyte. The default of 20 gigabyte is enough to perform the installation, but I like having some additional space. It's important to note that the virtual disk space is dynamically allocated by default. This means that only the amount of space actually used by the virtual machine will take up space on your physical computer's disk, even though you set the size of the virtual disk to 100 gigabyte, for example. If you wanted to pre-allocate the entire size of the virtual disk, you would click on the checkbox next to Pre-allocate Full Size. If you do that, then the entire size of the virtual disk will consume that same amount of space on your physical disk. If your primary concern is about preserving disk space or using as little space as possible, leave this box unchecked. However, if you're looking for better performance, check the box. If you're not sure if you need extra performance, just use the default and leave the box unchecked. So once you've decided on your disk size, click on Next. Now you'll be presented with a Summary of the configuration for the virtual machine that you're about to create. Click on Finish. Now we're ready to start the virtual machine, so click on Start. The virtual machine will power on or start up and boot from the ISO file. You'll notice that you have three options. The Test this media & install AlmaLinux option is highlighted. It's hard to tell that it's highlighted, but it is. What this will do is make sure that the image you are using isn't corrupted. I recommend going with the default, so press Enter to start the installation. You'll see the system start to boot and perform a check on the media. If for some reason the ISO got corrupted during the download process, this will alert you to that fact. You may notice a message from VirtualBox. This message tells us that we need to click inside the VM's window in order to use the mouse with the VM. What we're going to do is click the X to close this message. Now to interact with the VM, click inside its window. This allows the virtual machine to take control over the mouse and keyboard, so anything you type or any mouse movements you make are going to the virtual machine at this point. To give control of the mouse and keyboard back to the host system, you need to press the host key, which is a special key reserved for VirtualBox actions. The default host key on a Mac is the left Command key, while the default host key on Windows is the right CTRL key. Even if it's something different, you can always tell what the host key is by looking in the bottom right corner of your VM window. I'm on Windows, so you can see the words Right CTRL, which stands for the right CTRL key. Again, that is displayed in the bottom right corner of the VM window. We've clicked inside the virtual machine's window, and now we're inside of our virtual machine, if you will, and the first thing we need to do is select the language. And as you can hopefully tell, I speak English, so I'm going to use the default of English and click Continue. There are many selections you can make here on this Installation Summary screen. Most of them are optional. However, anything with an alert symbol next to it requires your attention. Let's start by clicking on the Installation Destination since it has an alert icon next to it. The only thing you have to do on this screen is to simply click Done. Now AlmaLinux is forcing you to make sure that you are installing it to the right disks. This virtual machine only has access to one virtual disk, and it's already selected. By the way, if it wasn't selected, you can go ahead and click on it, and you'll see a checkmark indicating that it is selected. So if it wasn't selected, it would look like this, and you would click it again, and then you would see the checkmark. So again, once there's a checkmark by the disk, go ahead and click on Done. Now you can see that the alert icon has disappeared next to the Installation Destination. We want to enable networking for our installation, so click on Network & Host Name next. If you see the word Disconnected next to the interface name, go ahead and click the on/off toggle switch. The network interface status should go from Disconnected to Connected. Now if it looks like this, and it says it's Connected, and you see the blue background that the toggle is on, there's nothing to do on this screen. So either way, click on Done. The next thing we need to do on this screen is to change the software selection, so now click on Software Selection. In the left-hand pane, click on Workstation. Now on the right-hand side, click on Development Tools, and if you can't see it in the right-hand pane, click on the scroll bar to page down until you can see it. So I'll click over here on the bottom of the scroll bar so that I can now see Development Tools. So what you do is click next to Development Tools. By the way, what you're looking for is the small mouse in the window here. You can see that I have two mouse pointers, and we're gonna fix this in a little bit, but when you're first doing the installation, you might see something like this. So just pay close attention to the little small mouse pointer, and that is what you are guiding. By the way, if you don't select Development Tools, you won't be able to install something later called VirtualBox Guest Additions, and we'll be talking about those Guest Additions in a little bit. So just make sure that there is a checkmark next to Development Tools. These are the only changes we need to do on this screen, so now we are ready to click on Done. Finally, we need to set a root password. You may not be able to see that setting, so hover over the scroll bar on the right and click on it to page down. Now you can click on Root Password. We'll be talking about the root account in detail later in this course, but for now, just choose a password. It's very important to remember that password, and if you can't think of a password, then I'll suggest one for you. It's adminuser, all lowercase, all one word. So I'm just going to enter that now, a-d-m-i-n-u-s-e-r, and I'll go to the next box here where I can confirm that password and type it again, adminuser. As you can see, there's a little message at the bottom of the screen. If the password you've chosen is considered to be weak, it's going to require you to press Done twice to confirm that password. So this particular password is weak. Now this is a virtual machine that no one but me will have access to, so I'm not really concerned about a strong password here. So go ahead and click on Done once, if you have a strong password, or twice, if you have a weak password. At this point, we're ready to start the installation, so click on Begin Installation. Now you can simply sit back and relax as the installation will take several minutes to complete. I'll speed it up here on video so you don't have to wait. Once you see a Complete message from the installer, click Reboot System so you can finish the installation. Once the system has rebooted, you'll be greeted with a Welcome screen. Click on Start Setup. If you don't want Location Services enabled, click the toggle switch to turn them off. Personally, I'm fine with Location Services being enabled, so I'm going to accept the default here and click on Next. At this point, you can Connect Your Online Accounts. I'm going to personally skip this process. Now you can also skip it and always do it later if you decide you want to, so go ahead and click on Skip. Now you're being asked to create an account for yourself on the system. Of course, you can fill in your actual real name here, but I'm going to keep it generic and use Admin User. A suggested username will be generated based on your input. You can accept the default or click on the down arrow for more options. Finally, if you don't like the autogenerated options, you can click in the Username field and type your own username. I'm fine with adminuser, and I'm going to use that, so click on Next. On this screen, you need to supply a Password for your account. Again, since this is a test system for myself, I'm going to use the very insecure password of adminuser. Once you've entered your password twice, click on Next. Finally, click on Start Using AlmaLinux. So what you see here is a tutorial, or a Tour, for the desktop environment, which is called Gnome. If you click No Thanks, you'll go straight into the desktop environment. If you click Take Tour, then you'll learn about some of the desktop features. Now I recommend you click Take Tour and read through the information that follows. For the sake of time, I'm just going to click No Thanks and let you explore that tour on your own. At this point, your job would be completely done if you were installing Linux directly on physical hardware, such as a desktop computer, a laptop, or a server. However, since we're using a virtual machine, we can optionally perform one more step that will help Linux understand the virtual hardware that it's working with. That step is to install a piece of software called VirtualBox Guest Additions. One of the main benefits of installing VirtualBox Guest Additions is that the Linux desktop will conform to the shape of the virtual machine window. For example, if I click the host key to detach the mouse from the virtual machine and back to my host operating system, then I can resize the window. But what we see when I do that is that the usable space of the Linux desktop doesn't expand or conform to fit the window. Instead, we just see a non-usable background expand around the Linux desktop. Another benefit of installing VirtualBox Guest Additions is that you get mouse integration, and mouse integration is the ability to use the host computer's mouse in the guest operating system without having to click into it and then without having to release it by pressing the host key. So if you're looking for the best Linux desktop experience within VirtualBox, then you'll want to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. And to do that, remember to first press the host key, which is the left Command key on a Mac or the right CTRL key on Windows. Now that lets your host system take back control of the mouse and keyboard. Now click on the Devices menu in the VirtualBox application and then click Insert Guest Additions CD image. Now you'll see a popup that asks you if you'd like to run the software that is on that image, and we do, so first click inside the virtual machine to give control back to the mouse and keyboard and click on Run. You'll now see a prompt asking for your password. The password that is being asked for is the password of your user account. Now this might be the same password as the root account, or it might not be, depending on what you've done in the previous steps. Again, it's important to know and memorize the password for the root account, as well as your own personal account. Now if you've been using my suggestions throughout this lesson, the password is going to be adminuser, so I'm going to enter that now, adminuser, and click on Authenticate. Now we'll wait for the VirtualBox Guest Additions to install. Once the installation is complete, you'll get a message to Press Return or Enter to close the window, and that's what we'll do now. I'm going to hit the Enter or Return key. Now we need to reboot the virtual machine, and to do that, we'll click in the top right-hand corner. Now, we'll click on Power Off/Log Out, and we'll click on Restart to restart our virtual machine. If there are any updates to install to the operating system, it'll ask you if you would like to do that, and I'm going to do that. I'm gonna leave the Install pending software updates checked, and go ahead and click on Restart. Now if you wanna be a little quicker here, you can uncheck this and click Restart. Either way is fine. Now the system has been rebooted, so I'm gonna click on my name here, or click on Admin user, enter the password of adminuser, and log in. Now if I were to resize the window, the Linux desktop should expand to fit that resize. So let me do that. I'll drag and drop it. And as you can see, once I've done resizing the window, the desktop expands to fit the area. So that brings us to the end of this lesson and wraps up the manual installation of AlmaLinux. Again, AlmaLinux is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. So this exact same process applies to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and any other Red Hat Enterprise Linux clones, such as Rocky Linux.